‘Hanging On by Our Fingertips’: Head of UNRWA Predicts ‘Killing of My Staff’ Amid IDF Assault

After two months of air assault and ground invasion, the Israeli military has turned its attention from northern Gaza to the south, where it previously directed 1 million Palestinians to seek refuge amid its war against Hamas.

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip penned a letter to UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis on Friday in which he predicted the eventual deaths of his staff amid the Israeli assault on the territory. He called it "the darkest hour in the agency's 75-year history."

“I must inform you that UNRWA's ability to implement its General Assembly mandate in Gaza is today severely limited with immediate and dire consequences for the UN humanitarian response and the lives of civilians in Gaza,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote on Friday. “The long-term implications for Palestine Refugees and prospects for a fair and lasting political solution are grave.”

Lazzarini noted that on the same day as the Hamas-led attack on several Israeli border towns that killed some 1,200 people, October 7, “several thousand civilians in Gaza moved pre-emptively to UNRWA premises, fearing unprecedented conflict and seeking safety under the UN flag.” By Friday, December 8, he said this number had swollen to 1.2 million - roughly half the population of the entire Gaza Strip.

According to UN statistics, 1.8 million of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes since October 7, and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 17,700 Palestinians since then, Gaza’s health ministry said on Friday.

The IDF acknowledged earlier this week that the majority of those killed have been civilians.

“UNRWA is, as of today, still operational in the Gaza Strip, though just barely,” he said. “Our staff are still operating health centers, managing shelters, and supporting traumatized people, some arriving carrying their dead children. We are still distributing food, even though the courtyards and corridors of our premises are too crowded to walk through. Our staff take their children to work so they know they are safe or can die together. More than 130 UNRWA staff are confirmed killed in bombardments, most with their families; the number might rise by the time you read this. At least 70% of UNRWA staff are displaced, and lack food, water, and adequate shelter. We are hanging on by our fingertips. If UNRWA collapses, humanitarian assistance in Gaza will also collapse.”

“The premise of UNRWA’s mandate - to provide services to Palestinian Refugees until there is a political solution - is at great risk: without safe shelter and aid, civilians in Gaza risk death or will be forced to Egypt and beyond. Forced displacement out of Gaza may end prospects for the political solution that is intrinsic to UNRWA’s mandate, with grave risks for regional peace and security. A forced displacement beyond Palestinian land, reminiscent of the 1948 nakba, must be prevented.”

“In my 35 years working in complex emergencies, I have never written such a letter - predicting the killing of my staff and the collapse of the mandate I am expected to fulfill,” Lazzarini said.

He finished by pleading for a ceasefire, noting that “calling for an end to the decimation of Gaza and its people is not a denial of the atrocities of 7 October.”

Mass protests around the globe have demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, including in the US, where an estimated 500,000 people gathered in Washington, DC, last month in the nation's largest-ever protest for Palestinians. However, so far, the Biden administration has stood staunchly by its ally, Israel, although in recent days the White House has made comments about the humanitarian situation in Gaza as well.

On Friday, the US vetoed a United Nations Security Council demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the war. That came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN charter, bring to the attention of the Security Council “any matter which, in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."

Israel has said it will not halt its military operation in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed - a goal many analysts say is impossible. Rhetoric from several figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government suggests many in Israel don't see Palestinian civilians as separate from Hamas, and polls of Israeli society show majority support for the amount of force the IDF is using in Gaza.

The UN mission has some 5,000 employees in Gaza, most of them Palestinians, to whom they have worked to provide humanitarian aid since 1949, a year after roughly 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from the territory of the newly-declared Israeli state amid a war between Israeli forces and the surrounding Arab states.

Denied the right to return to their homes by Israel, they settled in refugee camps in the surrounding territories, including Gaza, which was governed by Egypt at the time. The original UN mandate for the creation of Israel also called for the creation of a Palestinian state that included the West Bank, Gaza, and nearby territories since annexed by Israel - a promise that has never been fulfilled, despite its reaffirmation by Israel in agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at Oslo, Norway, in 1994.